Us and Them?

As expected, the days following a U.S. presidential election are filled with Monday-morning quarterbacking, when pundits and strategists alike opine what went wrong for the losing team. Often, it’s simply that the other side had a winning formula: The correct strategy. The Left has it. The Right doesn’t.

Politicos have become masters of manipulation, perfecting the divisive art of segregating Americans into polarized minority blocs, then coalescing them into a new majority that has the power to effect change through the ballot box. And while Obama stood before his loyal fans to deliver a victory speech based on the unity of these United States, the irony is that he conquered specifically through division.

He won by dividing the country according to race, gender, sexual orientation and above all, income bracket.

He won by spending nearly six years fomenting hatred — literal hatred — among countrymen for their wealthier counterparts. And guess who was most loathsome of all?

Sadly, Obama and his camp successfully managed to convince enough voters that Mitt Romney was not simply out of touch, but that he was someone to actually be reviled. Nevermind that he created employment for tens of thousands over his years in the private sector. Nevermind his charitable contributions. The total sum of a man and his life’s work was reduced to nothing more than the weight of his wallet.

Now tell me: Who, exactly, ismoney-obsessed here?

In 2008, just prior to Obama’s first coronation, a gift from the heavens was bestowed upon him. On the heels of the market crash, executives at Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, Fannie Mae and AIG became embroiled in a very public outing for their abuse of power and in helping to spur an economic disaster from which the nation has yet to recover.

They were men who, by hook or crook, achieved the pinnacle of financial success and when the bottom gave out, benefited from golden parachutes while their employees, shareholders and the American tax-payer took the fall. They served as obvious poster children for the catch-phrase “corporate greed” and were the linchpin of Obama’s crusade to “cut taxes on 95 percent of Americans,” by way of increasing it on the “other five.”

When an entire demographic is painted only as the privileged few – the bourgeois – faceless aside from a handful of its few disgraced members, it is not so difficult to see how the rhetoric of class warfare gains a foothold in our nation’s dialogue and creeps into the collective psyche. Then spreads like cancer.

While many associate the Obama campaign with slogans like “hope” and “change,” his most effective mantra of all hinged on the concept of “fair share.” Tax the wealthy and demand they give more. More than what? Is giving away over half of your hard-earned income to inept bureaucrats who will only put a match to it, still not enough?

The weight of the nation is carried on the backs of those who produce and contribute, and those of us fortunate enough to be gainfully employed in this dismal economic climate still have our paychecks signed each and every month by such evildoers.

Is it “fair” to bite the hand that feeds you? Obama taught Americans that it is.

The “wealthy,” who by Barack Obama’s standards are individuals, including small business owners earning $250,000 a year or more, already contribute the most in taxes. It is conveniently never mentioned that 50 percent of the population pay no income tax at all and that the top five percent of society bears well over half of the nation’s tax burden.

Liberals claim these “fat cats” could not exist without the working and middle class. But could the working and middle class exist without the upper? After all, it is the entrepreneurs who invent, the investors who fund the development, the scientists who shape and perfect, the doctors who contribute not just in tax dollars but in truly humanitarian ways. Both small and large business owners employ everyday Americans to market and sell the goods and services we need, enjoy, and take for granted each and every day, yet the producers who move our economy forward are considered the villains.

The United States is the single most generous nation on earth in terms of individual giving, yet the Left paints its country as the greedy, capitalist pig that kicks its poor to the curb. But nowhere else on earth do those at the poverty-line own their own flatscreen televisions, cars, microwaves ovens, refrigerators, stereos, and have heating and cooling units for their homes. That is not to say there aren’t people struggling. That is not to say there isn’t inequity. There is and there always will be, but that plight is not unique to the United States and those less fortunate are still better off here than anywhere else.

Despite their heavy tax-burden, by and large, the independently wealthy of this country contribute the most to the economy, to the job market, and through philanthropy. They donate more to charities and causes than entire nations do. The “evil rich” build educational facilities, libraries, hospitals, shelters, museums, community centers, treatment centers for every ailment and addiction in the book – they contribute to veterans’ causes, humanitarian causes, disease research, disaster relief. The list goes on.

Why would we ever wish to penalize them? What would happen if they moved overseas? Or, worse, evaporated into the ether? Who would replace them? A member of Occupy Wall Street?

The Left perceives the other five percent only as caricatures like those depicted in Oliver Stone’s famed movie, “Wall Street,” and not as most of them truly are: The pioneers and wealth-producers of an entire world. And in classic all-heart-no-head fashion, the Left petitions to take what was earned by others and give it those who won’t (not can’t) give it to themselves.

The re-election of Barack Obama beatified the welfare state and solidified the collective belief that the world owes each and every person, irrespective of their worthiness, a living. His re-election elevated hand-outs over self-reliance, pity over dignity, mediocrity over meritocracy.

Jealousy and resentment are the easiest weaknesses to exploit and prey upon, and in that, the Obama campaign found its winning strategy. It’s called class warfare. And apparently, it works.

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